When the government used to own hospital facilities and tourist resorts it was possible to transfer patients between these sites, especially in a time of national emergency, such as the Second World War. An earthquake struck Wellington on on the 24 June 1942, followed by a second on June 26, silencing the chimes of the Wellington post office clock, bringing down chimneys, disrupting the railways and severely damaging the Porirua Mental Hospital. During the second earthquake, a child was snatched by its mother from its bed “which a moment later was crushed under a mass of brickwork”. The 1,477 patients living at the hospital were reported to have remained “surprisingly calm” during the quake but evacuations began immediately because of the extensive damage to the building. Fifty-nine female patients were sent to Sunnyside in Christchurch and 50 to Kingseat in Auckland. After the second earthquake 100 male patients were sent to Stoke in Nelson and 100 to a former Salvation Army Inebriates’ Home on ‘Roto Roa Island’ in the Hauraki Gulf, but more accommodation was urgently required.

The Minister of Health announced that “the most suitable” and “amenable” patients would be sent to Wairakei (near Rotorua) and to the Chateau Tongariro. Dr D.G. McLachlan, from the Porirua Hospital, was appointed the superintendent at the Chateau Tongariro and advertisements were placed by the Tourist and Publicity Department announcing that the Hotel would be closed to the public from 15 September 1942 “until further notice”. Women, it seemed, were suitably ‘amenable’ and 200 were to be sent to the Chateau and 100 to Wairakei.

I’m from Christchurch. On my website, I introduce myself by saying ‘writing saves my life’. Before 15 March 2019, I was going to try and persuade you how this was so. I wanted to argue that I had evidence of this, that in the experience of writing Contents Under Pressure, my soon-to-be published poetry manuscript, I supported my damaged children in the wake of the Christchurch earthquakes, and, in doing so, kept them living.

I wanted to communicate some of what it felt, as a mother, to support teenagers who were suffering severe mental stress, and how necessary and large the task was to work our family back to health. I wanted to be there; attend the hours and days and weeks in doctors’ appointments, school appointments; listen and learn and implement coping strategies, model them; and most of all, through it all, give love and survive.

There’s nothing remarkable about a pencil, one would think. But simply by drawing off the page and over the edges of the desk and along the floor and up the walls and out the window and off over the fields, a person can draw a new horizon to aspire to … who knows how radical a doodle can be? Drawing can be a revolutionary act.

My sister has recently taken up that revolutionary pencil. She used to draw and take photographs but life’s demons had dragged her down and she had not done so since the 1970s. Now, however, despite a body crippled by multiple sclerosis (the “glass half-full” kind, slowly progressing), a mental state depleted by depression and chronic post-traumatic stress, and a spirit broken by 30,000 earthquakes (she lives in Christchurch), every day she manages to get up and settle at the kitchen table to do her ‘Arting’, as she calls it. As Franz Kafka wrote:

You do not have to leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You do not even have to listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quiet, still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked …”

4 September, 2010. 4.35 am. Wild horses stampede through my dreams. The earth trembles beneath their feet. The earth is shaking, cracking. Imploding. A plane is plummeting from the sky.

Chris’s voice above the din: “What the hell…?”

Then we’re lurching across the floor. Switch on the light. Nothing. Pitch black night. A giant fist picks up the house and slams it back down. And throws it sideways. The floor, the walls are rattling. Glass shattering. A vortex of sound fills every room. The dog! Get under the bed! But the dog! Bookcases are falling. The earth is heaving. Here. Now. Under us. This is it. We know it now. The Big One. [Read more…]

The book about mindfulness, newly purchased through Book Depository for dealing with anxiety and PTSD was recommended by my therapist. I visualised myself studiously poring over it and completing the various sections of the workbook, each of the completed sections a stepping-stone to wellness, wholeness and peace. However, opening the cover and seeing the word ‘anxiety’ in the title struck me down. I cried so much I couldn’t get past the first page. I never read the book.